by Rick Riordan
Everybody else raised their glasses. ‘To the gods!’
Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, ‘Speak to it. Whatever you want – non-alcoholic, of course.’
I said, ‘Cherry Coke.’
The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.
Then I had an idea. ‘Blue Cherry Coke.’
The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.
I took a cautious sip. Perfect.
I drank a toast to my mother.
She’s not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She’s in the Underworld. And if that’s a real place, then some day…
‘Here you go, Percy,’ Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket.
I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates towards the fire in the centre of the pavilion. I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.
‘Come on,’ Luke told me.
As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.
Luke murmured in my ear, ‘Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell.’
‘You’re kidding.’
His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn’t help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.
Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes. ‘Hermes.’
I was next.
I wished I knew what god’s name to say.
Finally, I made a silent plea. Whoever you are, tell me. Please.
I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames.
When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn’t gag.
It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn’t have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.
When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.
Mr D got up with a huge sigh. ‘Yes, I suppose I’d better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels.’
A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.
‘Personally,’ Mr D continued, ‘I couldn’t care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson.’
Chiron murmured something.
‘Er, Percy Jackson,’ Mr D corrected. ‘That’s right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on.’
Everybody cheered. We all headed down towards the amphitheatre, where Apollo’s cabin led a sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate toasted marshmallows and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn’t feel that anyone was staring at me any more. I felt that I was home.
Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag.
My fingers curled around the Minotaur horn. I thought about my mom, but I had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite.
When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly.
That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.
I wish I’d known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.
8 We Capture a Flag
The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don’t count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs and a centaur.
Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn’t that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English. After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache.
The rest of the day, I’d rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something I was good at. Chiron tried to teach me archery, but we found out pretty quick I wasn’t any good with a bow and arrow. He didn’t complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail.
Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They’d had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.
And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize me.
‘There’s more where that came from, punk,’ she’d mumble in my ear.
The only thing I really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn’t the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur.
I knew the senior campers and counsellors were watching me, trying to decide who my dad was, but they weren’t having an easy time of it. I wasn’t as strong as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. I didn’t have Hephaestus’s skill with metalwork or – gods forbid – Dionysus’s way with vine plants. Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to make me feel better. He really didn’t know what to make of me either.
Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing came. Just that warm feeling I’d always had, like the memory of his smile. I tried not to think too much about my mom, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save her, to bring her back…
I started to understand Luke’s bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn’t they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn’t my dad, whoever he was, make a phone appear?
Thursday afternoon, three days after I’d arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I had my first sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor.
We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed dummies in Greek armour. I guess I did okay. At least, I understood what I was supposed to do and my reflexes were good.
The problem was, I couldn’t find a blade that felt right in my hands. Either they were too heavy, or too light, or too long. Luke tried his best to fix me up, but he agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for me.
We moved on to duelling in pairs. Luke announced he would be my partner, since this was my first time.
‘Good luck,’ one of the campers told me. ‘Luke’s the best swordsman in the last three hundred years.’
‘Maybe he’ll go easy on me,’ I said.
The camper snorted.
Luke showed me thrusts and parries and shield blocks the hard way. With every swipe, I got a little more battered and bruised. ‘Keep your guard up, Percy,’ he’d say, then whap me in the ribs with the flat of his blade. ‘No, not that far up!’ Whap! ‘Lunge!’ Whap!‘Now, back!’ Whap!
By the time he called a break, I was soaked in sweat. Everybody swarmed the drinks cooler. Luke poured ice water on his head, which looked like such a good idea, I did the same.
Instantly, I felt better. Strength surged back into my arms. The sword didn’t feel so awkward.
‘Okay, everybody circle up!’ Luke ordered. ‘If Percy doesn’t mind, I want to give you a little demo.’
Great, I thought. Let’s all watch Percy get pounded.
The Hermes guys gathered around. They were suppressing smiles. I figured they’d been in my shoes before and couldn’t wait to see how Luke used me for a punching bag. He told everybody he was going to demonstrate a disarming technique: how to twist the enemy’s blade with the flat of your own sword so that he had no choice but to drop his weapon.
‘This is difficult,’ he stressed. ‘I’ve had it used against me. No laughing at Percy, now. Most swordsmen have to work years to master this technique.’
He demonstrated the move on me in slow motion. Sure enough, the sword clattered out of my hand.
‘Now in real time,’ he said, after I’d retrieved my weapon. ‘We keep sparring until one of us pulls it off. Ready, Percy?’
I nodded, and Luke came after me. Somehow, I kept him from getting a shot at the hilt of my sword. My senses opened up. I saw his attacks coming. I countered. I stepped forward and tried a thrust of my own. Luke deflected it easily, but I saw a change in his face. His eyes narrowed, and he started to press me with more force.
The sword grew heavy in my hand. The balance wasn’t right. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before Luke took me down, so I figured, What the heck?
I tried the disarming manoeuvre.
My blade hit the base of Luke’s and I twisted, putting my whole weight into a downward thrust.
Clang.
Luke’s sword rattled against the stones. The tip of my blade was a couple of centimetres from his undefended chest.
The other campers were silent.
I lowered my sword. ‘Um, sorry.’
For a moment, Luke was too stunned to speak.
‘Sorry?’ His scarred face broke into a grin. ‘By the gods, Percy, why are you sorry? Show me that again!’
I didn’t want to. The short burst of manic energy had completely abandoned me. But Luke insisted.
This time, there was no contest. The moment our swords connected, Luke hit my hilt and sent my weapon skidding across the floor.
After a long pause, somebody in the audience said, ‘Beginner’s luck?’
Luke wiped the sweat off his brow. He appraised me with an entirely new interest. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But I wonder what Percy could do with a balanced sword….’
Friday afternoon, I was sitting with Grover at the lake, resting from a near-death experience on the climbing wall. Grover had scampered to the top like a mountain goat, but the lava had almost got me. My shirt had smoking holes in it. The hairs had been singed off my forearms.
We sat on the pier, watching the naiads do underwater basket weaving, until I got up the nerve to ask Grover how his conversation had gone with Mr D.
His face turned a sickly shade of yellow.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Just great.’
‘So your career’s still on track?’
He glanced at me nervously. ‘Chiron t-told you I want a searcher’s licence?’
‘Well… no.’ I had no idea what a searcher’s licence was, but it didn’t seem like the right time to ask. ‘He just said you had big plans, you know… and that you needed credit for completing a keeper’s assignment. So did you get it?’
Grover looked down at the naiads. ‘Mr D suspended judgement. He said I hadn’t failed or succeeded with you yet, so our fates were still tied together. If you got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we both came back alive, then maybe he’d consider the job complete.’
My spirits lifted. ‘Well, that’s not so bad, right?’
‘Blaa-ha-ha! He might as well have transferred me to stable-cleaning duty. The chances of you getting a quest… and even if you did, why would you want me along?’
‘Of course I’d want you along!’
Grover stared glumly into the water. ‘Basket weaving… Must be nice to have a useful skill.’
I tried to reassure him that he had lots of talents, but that just made him look more miserable. We talked about canoeing and swordplay for a while, then debated the pros and cons of the different gods. Finally, I asked him about the four empty cabins.
‘Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis,’ he said. ‘She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she didn’t have one, she’d be mad.’
‘Yeah, okay. But the other three, the ones at the end. Are those the Big Three?’
Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject. ‘No. One of them, number two, is Hera’s,’ he said. ‘That’s another honorary thing. She’s the goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn’t go around having affairs with mortals. That’s her husband’s job. When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful brothers, the sons of Kronos.’
‘Zeus, Poseidon, Hades.’
‘Right. You know. After the great battle with the Titans, they took over the world from their dad and drew lots to decide who got what.’
‘Zeus got the sky,’ I remembered. ‘Poseidon the sea, Hades the Underworld.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But Hades doesn’t have a cabin here.’
‘No. He doesn’t have a throne on Olympus, either. He sort of does his own thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here…’ Grover shuddered. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘But Zeus and Poseidon – they both had, like, a bazillion kids in the myths. Why are their cabins empty?’
Grover shifted his hooves uncomfortably. ‘About sixty years ago, after World War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn’t sire any more heroes. Their children were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too much, causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of Hades on the other. The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath with them: no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River Styx.’
Thunder boomed.
I said, ‘That’s the most serious oath you can make.’
Grover nodded.
‘And the brothers kept their word – no kids?’
Grover’s face darkened. ‘Seventeen years ago, Zeus fell off the wagon. There was this TV starlet with a big fluffy eighties hairdo – he just couldn’t help himself. When their child was born, a little girl named Thalia… well, the River Styx is serious about promises. Zeus himself got off easy because he’s immortal, but he brought a terrible fate on his daughter.’
‘But that isn’t fair! It wasn’t the little girl’s fault.’
Grover hesitated. ‘Percy, children of the Big Three have powers greater than other half-bloods. They have a strong aura, a scent that attracts monsters. When Hades found out about the girl, he wasn’t too happy about Zeus breaking his oath. Hades let the worst monsters out of Tartarus to torment Thalia. A satyr was assigned to be her keeper when she was twelve, but there was nothing he could do. He tried to escort her here with a couple of other half-bloods she’d befriended. They almost made it. They got all the way to the top of that hill.’
He pointed across the valley, to the pine tree where I’d fought the Minotaur. ‘All three Kindly Ones were after them, along with a hoard of hellhounds. They were about to be overrun when Thalia told her satyr to take the other two half-bloods to safety while she held off the monsters. She was wounded and tired, and she didn’t want to live like a hunted animal. The satyr didn’t want to leave her, but he couldn’t change her mind, and he had to protect the others. So Thalia made her final stand alone, at the top of that hill. As she died, Zeus took pity on her. He turned her into that pine tree. Her spirit still helps protect the borders of the valley. That’s why the hill is called Half-Blood Hill.’
I stared at the pine in the distance.
The story made me feel hollow, and guilty, too. A girl my age had sacrificed hers
elf to save her friends. She had faced a whole army of monsters. Next to that, my victory over the Minotaur didn’t seem like much. I wondered, if I’d acted differently, could I have saved my mother?
‘Grover,’ I said, ‘have heroes really gone on quests to the Underworld?’
‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini.’
‘And have they ever returned somebody from the dead?’
‘No. Never. Orpheus came close…. Percy, you’re not seriously thinking –’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘I was just wondering. So… a satyr is always assigned to guard a demigod?’
Grover studied me warily. I hadn’t persuaded him that I’d really dropped the Underworld idea. ‘Not always. We go undercover to a lot of schools. We try to sniff out the half-bloods who have the makings of great heroes. If we find one with a very strong aura, like a child of the Big Three, we alert Chiron. He tries to keep an eye on them, since they could cause really huge problems.’
‘And you found me. Chiron said you thought I might be something special.’
Grover looked as if I’d just led him into a trap. ‘I didn’t… Oh, listen, don’t think like that. If you were – you know – you’d never ever be allowed a quest, and I’d never get my licence. You’re probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge. Don’t worry, okay?’
I got the idea he was reassuring himself more than me.
That night after dinner, there was a lot more excitement than usual.
At last, it was time for capture the flag.
When the plates were cleared away, the conch horn sounded and we all stood at our tables.
Campers yelled and cheered as Annabeth and two of her siblings ran into the pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about three metres long, glistening grey, with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree. From the opposite side of the pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar’s head.
I turned to Luke and yelled over the noise, ‘Those are the flags?’